The Buycraft Portal is now re-opened, and we are accepting supporter contributions once again. As we mentioned before, we have switched our payment gateway from Google Wallet to Stripe. Also as a bonus, thanks to a coupon code provided by Chief, we will not pay any transaction fees on our first $1000 dollars collected. So if you are planning on purchasing supporter benefits in the near future, know that 100% of your contribution will go towards offsetting our server costs.

On a related note, I’ve renewed our lease on the server and we should be up and running until at least April 15th, 2016. You can view a breakdown of all the server’s finances on the Server Finances Google doc.

Automated full dynmap renders have now been setup. Each world will be rendered separately on weekly basis on the following schedule:

Monday: ‘space‘ world from 5:55 am to 6:25 am UTC

Tuesday: ‘old‘ world from 5:55 am to 7:25 am UTC

Wednesday: ‘new‘ world from 5:55 am to 5:55 pm UTC

Thursday: ‘lab‘ world from 5:55 am to 6:25 am UTC

Friday: ‘games‘ world from 5:55 am to 6:25 am UTC

Also, warps from the spawn in the old world have now been finally restored. We’ve also brought back the emerald warp booths, and used the first booth to put in a warp to Arisa.

Finally, once again a reminder that you now only have 1 week to enter your submission for the Screenshot Contest. Rules and details for the contest can be found here. We currently only have 13 valid submissions, so please get them on to the subreddit before the cut-off date on February 28th!

The next GSM will be held on March 7, 2015. The same schedule from last meeting will apply – private at 9pm, public at 10:30. We will only be accepting Senator and Governor promotion requests – sorry Premiers, not yet! Click here to request a promotion.

Additionally, please submit your screenshots for the Screenshot Contest! We’ve had some great submissions so far, but it would be awesome if there were more. Rules and instructions are here. Also, don’t forget to vote on your favorites with the upvote and downvote buttons – these are used to determine the People’s Choice Awards.

Finally, IVY Airport will be opening to passenger traffic soon. If you scored gates, please talk to mikefishr or me and we can help you get planes pasted in and warps set up.

We are switching our payment handler from Google Wallet to Stripe, due to the planned retirement of the Google Wallet for Digital Goods service (which we currently use). As such, we have temporarily disabled the supporter center. We should have it back up and running in the next week or so, and you can make your contributions then. 🙂

We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience while we test the Stripe integration.

By the way, thank you for offsetting almost $1,000 of our operating costs! You can check out the spreadsheet here, if you’re interested.

Hello all! Thanks to everyone who came on during the GSM, it was super fun as always. And we’ve got loads of announcements to make. Most of them are in the meeting recording here, but if you don’t want to listen to that, here’s the rundown on what happened!

Public portion only started 10 minutes late

Even with the extended Private section, we still ran over, but not by much! So we will be keeping the schedule for future meetings – 9:00 pm private start time, and 10:30 pm public start time. We’ll post here if there’s a change.

Promotions

Lots of promotions this time around – thank you to everyone who submitted applications! Overall, 8 players were promoted out of 21 candidates.

Senator

We promoted 4 players to the [Senator] rank. Congratulations to:

autobus22 of Wazamawazi, C97 and T30

creeperface_ of BirchView, C1-ZN13

decorminecraft of Thunderbird, F17

ryumitch of Vekta, just outside C86

Check out these cities when you’re on next, they are all very cool!

Governor

We promoted 2 cities up to the [Governor] rank. Congratulations to:

chiefbozx of Vermilion, XW15

lalaboy of Kessler, T27

Since Lala and I are staff members, we are required to rank up our cities just like you, but our tags won’t be updated. However, the Vermilion airport (which will be given the code IVY) will be opening very soon!

If you weren’t promoted this time around, don’t worry, you will considered again automatically at the next GSM in March. If you want to know the actual reasons as to why you weren’t promoted, feel free to ask any staff member and they’ll fill you in on the details.

Premier

After a long discussion, the staff has decided to award kekkomatic the honorary rank of Premier for his work on Arisa, on the old world. (Gopher gave us the idea, so he gets +2 life points.) While ranks are usually not awarded based on old-world projects, the staff felt like Arisa was such an iconic project on the old world that it had to be recognized, and also to give aspiring Premiers an idea of what we’re looking for.

Kekko’s acceptance speech was as follows:

“Well, I’ve been playing on this server for as long as it’s been online. I joined on the third day, I remember, and I’ve been incredibly impressed with the community and the warmth. And you know, I’m only just glad that… I’m not glad about the recognition, and the importance of the project, but more about the friendships and the relationships that started from just joining a server. I’m a very shy person, so I would have never imagined to go this far. And I’m glad that the project is getting a final recognition. I’m also going to finish the city very soon, so that’s a… just thank you, I don’t know what to say!”

—kekkomatic

Congratulations Kekko on the rank, and thank you for such a great project – it has been super fun to watch it grow over the years.

Arisa is the exception that proves the rule: since it is such an epic, well-known city, we are giving Kekko the rank now, even though it is on the old world. We have high expectations for the Premier rank – it is meant to be given to the most epic cities – and so we are giving Arisa this title. We can’t wait to see what you build in your own cities!

We will begin accepting applications for Premier at the April or May GSMs depending on how much activity there is between now and then. We will let you know as the April GSM draws closer.

Moderator

We are pleased to announce that hntredtie has joined the ranks of the staff as a moderator! He will be learning the ropes over the next few weeks, but please give him your congratulations when you see him online!

Changes to rank requirements and perks

We made a few tweaks to rank requirements. These should be reflected on the Ranks page within a few days.

Citizen time requirement has been shortened

The time requirement has been shortened to 1 week. Many new Members were meeting the requirement very early on after being accepted – usually within a few days – so the minimum time has been shortened to accommodate this.

Epic landmark requirement moved to Governor

An EPIC landmark is now required for Governor cities, rather than Senator cities. Epic landmarks are unique to your city, clearly identifiable, and are a “must-see” when in your city. Think of the Eiffel Tower (Paris), Statue of Liberty (New York), Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco), or Mall of America (Minneapolis/Saint Paul) – but for your city. So get creative and make something epic!

Please don’t build replicas of the actual Eiffel Tower or Mall of America. Make your landmark unique to your city – that’s part of the fun!

Note: If you are currently at or above the Senator rank, you do not need to build a second landmark – you are effectively grandfathered in with your existing landmark.

Amusement parks are now allowed at Governor

Pretty self-explanatory. Governors can now build amusement parks within their cities.

The Premier Rank

We will begin accepting applications for the Premier rank in April or May. Premier is much different than the lower ranks, in that we are looking for the most epic cities of the server. Since each city is unique, it is more of a holistic judgement than a checklist to see whether a city should be promoted. Here’s what we’re looking for:

About 100 builds that are unique and have had a solid amount of effort put into them. This means that they should be:

Externally complete – no gaping holes in the walls, a finished roof, and doors at ground level.

Internally complete, as much as possible – all floors should be accessible via stairs or elevator and the lobby should be reasonably decorated. Upper floors can be emptier than the lobby, especially in apartment buildings, but some furniture or lighting is recommended.

Unique from other builds in your city, where possible.

All builds should blend in with their surrounding landscape well. Any cases of “land-scarring” or other unnatural-looking phenomenon should be fixed before attempting to achieve this rank.

Metro stations and bus stops do not count.

No active warnings.

Minimum of 8 weeks since your promotion to Governor.

The city should be EPIC – expressive, planned, individual, and culturally significant:

Expressive: cities that have a variety of buildings are more likely to be promoted. These include high and low density buildings,

Planned: A well-thought-out city with different districts, a good transportation network (which can include roads, walking paths, metro, or bus systems), and a feel for good organization is more likely to be promoted.

Individual: Your city must be unique from other cities on the server, either with its building styles, layout, landmarks, or “vibe”.

Culturally significant: Your city should be significant to the MRT community culture – whether that’s with its uniqueness, utility as a transit hub, host for events, or something else entirely.

The perks of the Premier rank are pretty few and far between:

Awesome yellow [Premier] tag.

Ability to place Beacons.

Your city will be marked on Dynmap by default, along with all the MRT lines.

There may be additional perks added down the road, but if you have suggestions, please feel free to send them our way.

The first A-class road

We are now accepting bids for the first A-class road, given the temporary code XA1. The road will go from Whitechapel to Central City-Inchmuir Street, along one of these preferred corridors. If you’re interested in working on the project, send an e-mail to staff+roads [at] minecartrapidtransit [ dot ] net with the following information:

Who will be building the road – a list of players

Where you will be building the road – dynmap screenshot with the alignment drawn on top

When you will be building the road – approximate is fine, as real-life stuff can come up unexpectedly!

How much you want to be paid for the road construction

Who will become the owner of the road

_frozen has stated that the recommended parameters for this project are: 1 month completion, $450 payout upon completion, and the road owned by the server upon completion.

Smaller updates

1.8 is coming soon. We are waiting on a few more plugins to update, then we’ll get the beta server up and running.

Mumble security is still very high. We will be doing Mumble admission and registration in batches, usually on GSM days. Please email Frumple directly if you need to get registered. We are expecting to operate on the high security procedure for the foreseeable future.

Supporter payment gateway will be switched to Stripe soon, due to Google Checkout (for merchants) being discontinued. To facilitate the switch, the Buycraft Portal may be taken down for a couple weeks in the near future. We will let you know when we make the switch. By the way, we’ve offset 30% of the server’s operating costs to date – thank you to all who have supported us! To become a Supporter,click here.

SCREENSHOT CONTEST: Click here for the full rules, then click here for the subreddit – don’t email submissions to the staff!

Username changes: Please don’t change your name unless you need to. Getting a name before someone else is OK, changing you name for the sake of changing it is not. More information is availablehere.

The next GSM will be on March 7th!

Wow, that was a lot. I’m going to bed. Congratulations to all who were promoted, and we look forward to seeing all of your creations in the next few weeks (and months)!